OnStar Announces Stolen Vehicle Cutoff Device

In a move that can be construed as either very comforting or very disturbing, depending on one's perspective, GM and OnStar announced today that they will offer a new technology called Stolen Vehicle Slowdown in 1.7 million 2009 model year vehicles.

The system, which is included in the one-year OnStar subscription that customers receive when buying an eligible 2009 model year vehicle, is activated when a customer reports a stolen vehicle to law enforcement. The subscriber then can call OnStar and request Stolen Vehicle Location Assistance. As long as the subscriber has not opted out of Stolen Vehicle Location Assistance, OnStar will locate the vehicle using GPS technology and provide its information to law enforcement.

Once police officers have seen the stolen vehicle, they can ask OnStar to slow the vehicle remotely. OnStar can then send a remote signal to the vehicle to reduce engine power, gradually slowing the vehicle, and preventing a dangerous high speed police chase.

On one hand, since most stolen vehicles are not recovered intact - if at all - it's nice to know that your car will make itself much easier for police to find. It's also reassuring that a pretty foolproof way to prevent police chases - at least of GM vehicles - has been developed. Generally, those hurt most by police chases are innocent bystanders, the police officers doing the chase, or the owner of the stolen vehicle - because they rarely end without significant damage to the stolen vehicle.

However, I have a few problems with this, some of them fundamental to the way GM markets its OnStar service. More and more GM models are featuring OnStar as standard equipment - either across the entire model range, or standard on upper trim levels. For instance, it's impossible to buy a new 2008 Corvette without OnStar. Some people have a big problem giving a third party the theoretical ability to track their vehicle's location and speed and don't want the service. These individuals have three choices: buy a different vehicle, probably from one of GM's competitors; go through the effort of disabling OnStar and removing the hardware (this is not easy to do, and will probably become even more difficult for 2009 model year vehicles, otherwise thieves will just disable OnStar); or buying the vehicle anyway and just living with the idea of OnStar having the ability to know where you are and how fast you're going.

GM isn't making OnStar standard in more and more vehicles out of the goodness of its corporate heart; rather, it's almost entirely financial (with a small intangible advertising benefit). You see, for every vehicle that GM sells with OnStar, even if it's "standard," they increase the vehicle's price by a few hundred dollars. Not only does this raise average transaction prices for GM, but also makes it easier to convert some of those first year "free" OnStar subscribers to annual paying customers.

GM's obsession with OnStar and its recurring revenue streams often cause the company to make shortsighted decisions to "protect" OnStar. One example of this is the lack of factory available Bluetooth interoperability in the all-new 2008 Cadillac CTS. GM figured that allowing owners to use the car's electronics to connect to their cell phone could jeopardize the OnStar hands-free calling feature, so it wasn't planned for the US launch of the vehicle, while European CTS models - where OnStar is not available - did get Bluetooth. A customer and critical uproar over this decision led GM to backtrack and offer Bluetooth as a dealer-installed accessory instead.

Another example of GM's OnStar myopia is the lack of availability in several of its midsize sedans. None of the vehicles on the Epsilon platform - the Pontiac G6 (released for the 2005 model year), Saturn Aura (released for the 2007 model year), or Chevrolet Malibu (released for the 2008 model year) have satellite navigation available as even an option. Instead, GM is happy to point customers to its OnStar Turn-by-Turn navigation service, which - for additional charges on top of the basic OnStar subscription - will show monochrome arrows on the radio display and verbally give the driver instructions. For those who have grown used to a color LCD map display in your vehicle, it's not the same thing.

I hope for GM's sake that the new OnStar feature has plenty of safeguards built in to ensure that only vehicles legitimately reported stolen by their owners are disabled/stopped, and that it's not misued or abused by anyone. The bottom line is, in my opinion, OnStar is a nice feature for those who want it, and this new feature is a nice addition to its capabilities. However, I don't believe that OnStar should be standard in any vehicle, even in those at higher trim levels like Corvettes or Cadillacs.

Chery's Turn to Fail a Crash Test

We've covered the disasters that crash tests have proven to be for Chinese cars in the past (search Google for 'Landwind SUV' or click on Brilliance BS6 for information on those). Now, news out of Russia is that the Chery Amulet - the top-selling Chinese model in Russia - has failed a crash test conducted for auto magazine AvtoRevu in spectacular fashion. In its 17 year history, the well-regarded AvtoRevu magazine has conducted 39 crash tests; most of those were locally-built models, but it has also conducted tests on foreign models from the U.S., Italy, France, and South Korea. Many of the foreign models have earned top ratings, and in fact a Russian-built model built by Avtovaz earned the magazine's lowest score ever, 0 out of 16, in 2001, so there likely was no conspiracy against Chinese imports or Chery specifically. In fact, Chery officials were present during the Amulet crash test.

The test that the car failed was designed to replicate the often-cited EuroNCAP offset barrier test; the car is traveling 64 kilometers per hour (about 40 miles per hour) into a solid barrier, but only part of the front bumper hits the barrier (so the impact is concentrated on a smaller area). The result was nothing short of catastrophic and is surely making Chrysler and Fiat executives a bit nervous this morning (since both companies have entered into agreements to have Chery build cars for them in the coming years). The car continued deforming past the rear edge of the front fender and continued until the crash test dummy driver's face was as far forward as the barrier! Don't take my word for it - see it for yourself below.


The test dummy became so entwined in the wreckage that it had to be removed from the car in pieces; he basically became part of the dashboard and steering wheel. The results were so bad that AvtoRevu called on Chery to immediately withdraw the car from the market. Chery declined to do so.

For its part, Chrysler is well aware of the safety and quality concerns that Chinese cars bring to the table. Chrysler plans to send scores of engineers to China to help Chery improve the engineering of their vehicles, and the ones exported to North America in particular, and also plans to keep a close eye on the supply chain to ensure that no shortcuts are taken in terms of material quality (AvtoRevu magazine speculated that perhaps Chery used softer metal than it should have in the Amulet; Chery denies this).

Once again, as long as I continue to value the safety of myself and my loved ones, I do not plan to do more than sit in a stationary Chinese-built car until they have proven that they can build cars to the same safety standards that the rest of the world adheres to. The Chinese auto manufacturers really need to get their act together with regard to quality and safety - there's a reason their cars are so cheap, and it's not low labor costs. It's a lack of engineering talent, sub-par materials, and indifferent quality control.

Nissan Develops Anti-Drunk Driving Technology

Nissan really wants to do something about drinking and driving, so it has come up with a system that integrates alcohol odor sensors in the front seats and gearshift, a facial recognition system that determines the driver's state of consciousness via eye blinking, and a driving behavior system that senses if the car is staying in its lane or not.

If the gearshift sensor (pictured) detects alcohol in the driver's perspiration, it automatically locks the gearshift and prevents the car from being driven. There are also visual and audio warnings on the navigation screen, and the seatbelts can be automatically tightened to get the driver's attention.

This might not be a bad idea; I'm sure many drunk driving accidents are caused when people think they're a little buzzed, but not drunk (but of course have no clue what their blood-alcohol level is, and how it impacts their reaction time and decision making abilities).

It's easy for me to see how this system could be a useful safety device. For example, I was at a wedding in June and was the designated driver. I was expecting to take seven people to the hotel from the reception, and many of my friends were really inebriated at one time or another during the night. Eventually, all but one drove themselves to the hotel (after several hours of not drinking, and assuring me that they were "fine,") and the one who rode with me only did so because I shamed him into it, as he was the one who had me unfolding seats, taking out the child seat, and going to the trouble of getting our SUV into maximum passenger carrying mode.

Once we were back at the hotel (thank God everyone made it there OK), one of the friends who was supposed to ride with me later said that he realized about halfway into his trip that he shouldn't have been driving. Lucky for him and everyone else on the road at the same time, he didn't have any problems, but obviously he could have at some point. He just didn't know objectively what his blood alcohol level was, but this system would have kept him in the passenger seat where he belonged.

Germany's Road Sign Deforestation

Germans tend to feel more comfortable when they are given precise, unambiguous rules. To that end, their roads are absolutely covered in road signs - to the tune of over 20 million signs. There is an average of one road sign every 28 meters, or 36 signs per kilometer. Many German drivers now feel that their country's road sign proliferation is so bad that that the sheer quantity of them has become a safety hazard. In fact, 75% of all German drivers in a recent survey conducted by Germany's ADAC automobile club believed their country had too many road signs.

Now, the country is doing something about it. With the encouragement of the German Transport Ministry, local authorities in some towns have been cruising around while having frank discussions about the necessity of some signs, such as a "pedestrians only" sign on a walkway too narrow for even a bicycle, or a "toad crossing" sign at another location. The goal of the sign-reduction project is to get rid of as many as half of Germany's road sign population.

When a sign is identified as potentially unnecessary, it is covered by a plastic yellow hood that advises of the sign's condemnation. If nobody complains after a few weeks of the sign being covered, it is removed permanently. Some of the removed signs are sold for scrap, while others are kept in storage "in case they're needed later."

The small Dutch town of Drachten also suffered from an excess of road signs and traffic lights, so its leadership took the radical step of removing ALL signs and signals, and installing a children's playground in the middle of a road to encourage drivers to slow down. The result was that traffic moved more "safely," but no longer flowed as smoothly. The German town of Bohmte would like to attempt a similar experiment.

Though I would love to have the pleasure of driving a performance car on an unrestricted stretch of open Autobahn, driving through cities and towns in Germany would probably be less enjoyable. I'm all for reducing roadside clutter and driver distractions (in this case, external distractions), but without a navigation system, I'd imagine that it's very difficult to find one's way through a town with no signs.

Child Seat Heads-Up and Plea

In the past month, I've had three conversations with parents or grandparents of young children (or, in one case, future parents of a young child) who spoke of putting their child in an infant carrier in the front seat of their vehicle. After having these conversations, I was almost dumbfounded, because I had no clue that there were still parents in 2007 that didn't put their children in the back seat as all of the safety experts advised. I figured that if I couldn't properly convince those people to use the back seat only for children, maybe I could save some other lives instead of their childrens'/grandchildrens'.

The belief that it's "OK" or "not a big deal" to have a very young child in the front seat of a car is, in my opinion, foolish. The reason cars and trucks have frontal airbags is because most collisions are frontal; simple physics then tells us that the further away from the impact a passenger is, the less likely it is that they would be injured or killed. Just think about that one - the back seat in almost any car is probably four or five feet farther from the firewall than the front seat. According to safekids.org, crash statistics bear this common sense out; one study showed that children are 37% more likely to be killed if seated in the front seat rather than the rear seat. As a father, I am fully in favor of giving my child a 37% better chance of surviving a crash, as should any responsible parent.

Here's another chilling statistic, from the NHTSA: "Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for the age group 3 to 14 years old (based on 2003 figures, which are the latest mortality data currently available from the National Center for Health Statistics)." The same report also states, "Research on the effectiveness of child safety seats has found them to reduce fatal injury by 71 percent for infants (less than 1 year old) and by 54 percent for toddlers (1-4 years old) in passenger cars." So doesn't it stand to reason that it's important to properly restrain your young child?

Although I have personally buckled up since childhood, and have never driven a car without wearing one, I consider myself far from extreme in my child safety views. In fact, I believe that laws such as Pennsylvania's that require a child of up to seven years old to be in a booster seat to be a little over-the-top, considering there is no weight exemption. If you have a Baby Huey-sized seven year old who weighs 110 pounds, it's ridiculous to have him in a booster seat. I do support mandatory seatbelt laws, particularly for children 17 and under, however.

Here are some excuses I've heard for putting children in the front seat that carry ZERO weight with me, as well as my response to these statements.

"When I was raising my kids 30 years ago, we didn't even have cars seats, and they turned out fine!"
Yes, but there are plenty of kids from our generation who didn't turn out fine, because they were killed or maimed in traffic accidents. The overall fatality rate has basically been cut by more than half since 1975, from 3.5 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles of travel, to 1.47 in 2005 (link to recent data). So obviously we're doing something better with regard to occupant protection today. Is it possible we know more now than we did then?

"It's much easier to take care of an infant in the front seat, rather than unsafely reaching to the back seat while driving."
While it is unsafe to reach to the back seat to take care of a baby, having a mirror on the seat so that you can see the baby without turning your head makes this situation safer (as long as the mirror is secured properly). I don't think holding a baby bottle while driving is any safer than reaching to the back seat (we prefer to have a single child seat on the right side of the car so the reach is easier). It's also prudent to just pull over for a minute to take care of the baby.

"If it's going to be your time to be killed in a car accident, there's nothing you can do to change that. You can't improve your odds."
Yes, you CAN improve your odds. If you KNEW for sure that you were going to be in a traffic accident tomorrow, and there was nothing you could do to stop it, would you wear a seatbelt at least for tomorrow? Of course you would. That's called improving your odds. If you wouldn't, (and I say this with all due respect), you're an imbecile. I believe very strongly in God, but I don't plan on tempting fate by leaving myself or anyone in my family unprotected in the car. I will also buy every airbag possible in any new vehicle I purchase.

"If you only have a two seat car, it's legal to have the baby in the front passenger seat in Pennsylvania."
Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's safe. I've already mentioned one area where Pennsylvania went overboard with the child restraint laws (no weight limit on the boosters); they have also ignored serious potential safety issues allowing small children in the front seat and allowing children to be unrestrained in a vehicle that has all of the other seating positions are occupied by restrained passengers. So the Baby Huey seven year old needs a booster seat, unless his parents own a five-passenger car and he's the sixth passenger, in which case he can sit on his brother's lap. If someone owns only a two-seat car or pickup, and there is no other way to transport a child, it's still a bad idea, but at least be certain that the passenger airbag is deactivated for all small children, and it's absolutely essential to do so with rear-facing seats.

I apologize for the preachy article, but please, think carefully about the way you are protecting your children in the car. It's your job as a parent to make smart decisions for them.

Additional resources:
Child Seat FAQ: http://www.usa.safekids.org/tier3_cd.cfm?content_item_id=6551&folder_id=170

Child car seat safety at Edmunds:
http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/safety/articles/45195/article.html

Death Wish? Buy a Brilliance BS6

Last week, photos and video started circulating online of the horrific crash test results of the Chinese Brilliance BS6 sedan. The car was tested using the well-recognized Euro-NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) offset frontal crash test at 40 miles per hour by ADAC, a German auto club.

In cars that ace these tests, the passenger compartment stays almost completely intact with no intrusion of the floor into the driver's footwell or the instrument panel into the driver's face. The best cars often still have functioning driver's doors, yet sacrifice so much of their front end absorbing the crash energy that the occupants get out of the car relatively unscathed.

Instead, the poorly-named Brilliance BS6 saw the pedals intrude into the driver's space by 18 inches, and the dashboard by 7 inches. The driver's door wouldn't open without the technicians using a huge crowbar, and the rocker panel bent almost 90 degrees, stopped only when it hit the floor. The base of the windshield moved to the same vertical plane as the top of the windshield was before the crash, and the driver was left sharing space with steering wheels, windshields, and the front end of the car. He or she would have almost certainly been killed instantly.

ADAC also tested another BS6 for side impact protection (this is also in the video linked above). In this test, the side impact cart intruded past the width of the door into the passenger compartment (over 12 inches) and whipped the driver's head so severely that he would have almost certainly been killed.

Naturally, the car earned the minimum rating, one star, on a five-star scale.

If you're keeping score at home, Chinese vehicles undergoing western crash tests have both failed miserably (the earlier being the Landwind SUV, which fared so poorly it was withdrawn from the European market).

So far, the Luxembourg-based distributor for the BS6, HSO Motors, has sold 350 of the €19,000 cars, and has said that dealers should offer to repurchase the cars from owners who are concerned about its crashworthiness. However, one dealer quoted in Automotive News said, "For price-conscious customers who are careful drivers, this safety issue does not have priority." He also said that he would continue selling the car.

Great - so if you're sure you won't be in an accident, you're OK in a Brilliance. But I always thought that most accidents sort of happened, you know, accidentally. I've been in two of them in 16 years of driving, and I didn't plan them ahead of time. I really didn't expect them to happen, frankly. Sometimes, they're unavoidable.

For its part, the manufacturer doesn't believe that the poor crash test results will hurt sales. The company also accused the German media of "viciously playing up" the ADAC test results. Brilliance also said that they agreed to cooperate with ADAC on the BS6's safety, and expect the car to earn three stars within a year. Brilliance also would like to find a partner to help it crack the US market, and said in April that it would like to sell cars in the US, including the BS6, no later than early 2008.

Personally, I don't plan to set foot in a Chinese car that will be moving (I'd feel reasonably safe in one in a static display at an auto show) until I'm convinced that the safety of these vehicles has improved to modern standards. I'd take a good used car - or a new Renault/Dacia Logan/Nissan Aprio - any day over a Chinese car with questionable occupant protection capabilities. But, if you have a death wish, you can always buy one of these and drive into an offset barrier at 40 miles per hour. You won't be around to tell us about it.